Entertainment

PRIME TIME

At first glance, the e-mail from reader Jim Mulloy of Massapequa read like a put-on:

“I’d like to thank The History Channel for its annual programming salute to the contributions of the Irish on St. Patrick’s Day.”

Below that, Mulloy listed documentaries that heavily leaned upon every Irish social stereotype, most of them thoroughly negative. But Mulloy, I’ve come to know, is more creative and far funnier than what he’d listed. So I checked History Channel’s listings for March 17.

No wonder it wasn’t that funny; he wasn’t kidding.

The History Channel’s St. Patrick’s Day lineup:

8-10 a.m. – “Paddy Whacked: The Irish Mob.

” 10-11 a.m – “Modern Marvels: Irish monks referred to whiskey as the ‘water of life,’ . . .”

11 a.m.-noon – “True Crime: Track the story of New York’s violent Irish mob that terrorized the city for 20 years.”

Noon-1 p.m. – “American Eats,” the history of beer.

1-2p.m – Apparently a non-Irish themed show, about snack foods. The potato chip?

2-4 p.m. – Paddy Whacked, repeat.

4-5 p.m. – Modern Marvels’ Irish whiskey story is retold.

5-6 p.m. – The True Crime story of New York’s Irish mobs is repeated.

Finally, at 6 p.m., having perhaps exhausted its supply of Irish-themed programming, History Channel returned to non-Irish themes.

Booze and crime that should be our image of the Irish. No authors, scholars, statesmen, artists, entertainers, athletes, scientists, pioneers in any field. No heroes, no heroines, just booze and crime.

Can’t wait for this Columbus Day.

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As long as History Channel sets itself up for a bashing we’ll keep swinging. Its sense of easy-to-verify history often stinks, infuriating and alienating what should be its most devoted viewers those with an active and genuine regard for history.

On March 9, its series “Unsung Heroes” focused on the U.S. Marines who fought and in great numbers died in America’s first major engagement of World War I, Belleau Wood, in June 1918.

In Belleau Wood, a region in Northern France, there is a cemetery in which 2,289 U.S. war dead are buried. Belleau Wood is a highly significant place in which a highly significant battle was fought during a highly significant time in U.S. and world history.

And on History Channel, Belleau Wood was identified, in a large two-word graphic, as “Belleau Woods.”

Not a huge error, unless one would consider the misspelling of Gettysburg within a Civil War documentary a small error. It wasn’t the kind of error that could easily elude vigilant, history-minded editors before the documentary was released for national viewing.

A recent History Channel profile of WW II Waffen-SS General Sepp Dietrich, one of Adolph Hitler’s closest and most loyal military men, described him as, “A Nazi to the core.”

Several minutes later, in the same piece, Dietrich is described as a man who often was at odds with Nazi ideology. Huh?

The History Channel is too often like that; it too often treats history as unimportant, as something that appears between commercials.

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NIMBY TV: The citizens of Stamford, Conn. consider their town a bad place to be the new home of “The Jerry Springer Show.” Agreed.

But where would a good place be?

Besides, if the lowest forms of trash TV are too good for Stamford why is Stamford the corporate headquarters of World Wrestling Entertainment?

And how is it that the concerned residents of Stamford didn’t rise up in protest at Gov. Jodi Rell’s recent appointment of WWE CEO Linda McMahon to the Connecticut State Board of Education? McMahon was appointed even after the Stamford Advocate revealed her claim of a college degree in education to be false.